The City of Hidden Truth
by QuinnSwan
Summary: A white knight was drawn to this city, Storybrooke City, a big dark city with everyone in it each had their own deep dark secret. As the knight tried to unfold the secrets within the city, she discovered something sinister about her friend. AU, OOC, one shot, warning for language and depiction of injury. hints of swanqueen/redqueen


**Author's note: I used to write a fiction. This is part of it. A friend, Cheryl, requested to alter it a bit due to some minor resemblances with the show(the knight and the werewolf part I suppose).****So since I'll be working during the holiday, I just need to get this out of the system right away. Sorry for the shitty grammar and spelling errors. LOL.**

**AU: Imagine Storybrooke as a big city and as dark as Gotham City in the Dark Knight movie**

**Disclaimer: OUAT and the characters belong to their rightful owner, not me obviously**

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><p>The blonde kept on walking despite all of the rubble and the piles that were blocking her way with the smoked surrounding. She could hear the cracking sounds of the building after the explosion and she realized the hazards of being in the damaged city hall, or what it used to be.<p>

Then, she heard a faint voice which was so familiar to her. The voice that belonged to the exact person she had been looking for. The blonde anxiously ran towards the voice with numerous feelings that she couldn't even describe. She staggered along the way to a room at the end of the hallway. She was very sure that the voice came from the Mayor's room.

As she was reaching the room, Emma slowed down to focus on the voice. She stepped into the Mayor's room silently and she definitely couldn't believe what she was seeing. The blonde was so stunned to see a huge creature before her and she was sure that the beast was a type of canines.

Emma Swan, the city's police commissioner, a white knight to the dark city, was lucky that the beast's back was facing her and it seemed to be distracted by something beneath it. The blonde was sure that she used to encounter the beast in few other revolting occasions prior to this but none of those encounters had ever brought her any closer to the beast as being in a same room.

She heard the voice again and she quietly searched for the voice. The voice was groaning in pain. The knight had difficulty in searching the person who owned the voice with the smoked surrounding and all the wreckage; however she was also thankful that that wreckage would mask her hidden from the creature, at least by visual.

As she followed the sound of the voice, she stammered and she was sure that she was getting closer to the creature until she saw it clearly. The beast was a wolf, a werewolf to be exact. The owner of the voice was sitting right beneath the big bad wolf as the wolf seemed to be looking down upon her and growled softly.

"Regina!" She screamed loudly without any uncertainty as her anger was overcoming her fear towards the creature.

Then, she pulled out her gun and shot a warning shot into the air. The creature was so surprised and it quickly turned to face the source of the piercing sound. The obviously hostile wolf growled more loudly while revealing its fangs which were covered in blood.

Emma looked into the beast's eyes as if she was trying to challenge it into a fight. She was reading the wolf cautiously and the beast seemed to be doing the same. Both were intimidated by each other but none of them seemed to be willing to make the first move.

"You son of b…!" Emma raised her hands towards the wolf and a bright white light was formed from both of her hands. The light grew bigger as the blonde's mounting anger causing the whole room to be enveloping by the white light. A sudden burst of the light into the air had startled the wolf making it jumped out of the room through a large shattered window and fled.

"Regina!" the blonde quickly approached the lethargic looking brunette and held her close in her arms. "Come on, woman, open your eyes!" she shook the woman's shoulders softly but enough to wake the brunette from her drowsiness. The knight did not want to cause the woman any further injury.

"Emma?"

"Hey there sleepyhead, are you okay?" the woman in her arms gave the blonde an ailing smile.

"Do I look okay to you, you imbecile knight?" the knight chuckled softly at the gorgeous woman's retort. They would never stop getting on each other's nerves. Regina Mills, the Mayor's daughter, the youngest heiress of the Mills Empire, still had her sassiness despite her ill looking condition and was still able to look as beautiful as ever.

"You're looking fine there, your majesty," Emma said as she brushed a strand of hairs from Regina's cheek. She was glad that the other woman was safely unharmed in her arms and pulled the brunette closer to her chest.

"Ouch!"

"What happened?"

"It's my leg, the wound…" the woman suddenly raised her head looking up at Emma with a frightened look in her eyes. Her eyes were filled with tears.

"Hey, what is wrong?" there was panic in the blonde's voice.

"Emma, where is my father?" she tried to free herself from Emma and struggled to push herself up. "He was here with me before the…" there were tears running down her cheeks.

Emma held her effortlessly to prevent her from struggling more and pulled the woman into her arms.

"Calm down, he is fine. I found him and he is gonna be fine. Trust me, everything is gonna be fine," she whispered softly into the brunette's ear and drew a soothing circle on her back as the brunette became eased defenselessly. Regina closed her eyes despairingly and became comfortably lost in the blonde's strong arms after a while.

"Thank you, Emma" she muffled.

"Anything for you, your majesty," the knight said and put a soft kiss on her forehead as Regina fell asleep.

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><p>She kept on swearing but she knew well that swears wouldn't make the pain go away.<p>

She was panting and begging for air. Even breathing was killing her, let alone dragging her weakened legs towards her apartment.

She could feel that every single cell in her body was healing but the process of healing was not that beautiful. Scratch that, the healing process was too damn painful.

"Damn it!" she desperately took off her black hooded leather jacket or whatever left of it and threw it across the room once she entered her apartment. She noticed that her red tank top was mostly stained with blood and sweat.

"Fuck this!" she struggled to keep herself in balance as she sat at the corner of her living room.

"Damn, those are gonna scar for life," she smirked as she looked at a big abrasion wound with multiple other small lacerations over her abdomen. Ruby couldn't help noticing the multiple gunshot wounds over her shoulder and arms. She was sure that her back was as rugged as her front due to the insufferable pain she was having.

"Wow, this is the prettiest one," she looked at her right shoulder smiling and recalled the one who had causing the wound. She noted that the bullet was still embedded in her muscle.

"Honey, you did this, I'm so proud of you," she pushed herself up and walked towards her kitchen.

Ruby found herself a pair of pliers in her toolbox and lit up her stove.

"Girl, this time it is on you," she smiled amusingly as she saw the pliers turned bright red over the fire and there was smoke emanated from them.

Ruby took a deep breath and quickly stabbed the pliers inside the wound over her right shoulder while dreadfully pulling the bullet out. Once the bullet was out, the blood just wouldn't stop coming out. She started to feel giddy and her visions were blurring. She threw the pliers away with the bullet into a sink.

"Damn it!" she used all of her strength to grab a knife from a nearby counter and burned it over the stove. Then she quickly placed the glowing burnt knife over the ongoing bleeding wound and she just couldn't help groaning painfully.

"Fuck this," after a while, she fell down sitting on the floor with her back against a counter. She was pretty much satisfied that she managed to stop the bleeding.

"Damn, it is gonna be a long night." She thought to herself. She was smiling as she closed her eyes while trying to forget the recent event. Then, Regina's face came to her mind. The woman's face was so painfully terrified with tears in her eyes begging for Ruby's mercy.

_'Please, don't hurt me,' she cried underneath the big wolf._ She snapped her eyes open upon recalling that incident.

"Fuck it, I am sorry! I… I didn't mean to…" she pulled up her injured hands and covered her face with both of them. Ruby tried her best to stop her tears and blamed herself for causing the Mayor's daughter to be so scared. She didn't mean harm to the other woman whom she had been infatuated with for as long as she could remember.

All she wanted to do was to help Regina. She just wanted to protect the other brunette from those mobs. But of course nobody would understand her when she was in another form of herself, a werewolf. Nobody understood a raging creature that appeared out of nowhere killing random people.

Nobody would understand her, Ruby, a big bad werewolf. Not even Regina, her childhood friend especially after that incident. And that made her breakdown.

Ruby was sure that the whole city was hunting her; the other version of her, the thought of her being a hunter who was being hunted was totally humorous. She kept closing her eyes as she tried to shut away the world and the unbearable pain. She just wanted that everything that she was having at that moment to be ended. The wolf just wanted to die rather than facing the world.

She was drifted off into her own realm. The surrounding was silent and dark.

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><p>Ruby was unsure for how long she had been losing her consciousness when suddenly she heard a loud thug outside of her apartment as if someone was trying to break open the door. She heard a familiar footstep was approaching her. She could sense the person who entered her apartment and she sighed.<p>

"I'll be damned,"

All she could do was smiling in pain when the expected figure stood in front of her. The wolf could tell that the other person was gawking at her in horror.

"Well, I got that kind of look all the time but not usually in my human form," she chuckled as she looked up at the woman before her.

"Damn it, Ruby, what… what the hell…" Emma looked down upon her severely injured friend in disbelief.

The brunette just laughed upon seeing her friend's reaction. Emma reached down to the injured woman and put her arm around her friend's back to pull her up.

"I didn't expect such reaction from you, the city's knight," she smirked in agony.

"And I didn't expect you to be alive after all those... things...," The said knight said in annoyance. Emma supported Ruby as they walked towards a couch.

Emma helped the injured woman to sit on the couch slowly as Ruby exclaimed painfully. Then, the knight paced about the living hall as she tried to process the event.

"Just say it, Emma"

"Why the fuck... What the fuck just..."

"What the fuck am I? Is that what you're trying to ask?"

"No dude, what the hell just happened?" Emma could hear herself shouting at the other woman.

"Well, the city hall got attacked by those pesky Pan and his boys... and all of the councilmen were..."

"The fuck with all that, why didn't you tell me that you're that... that... thing..." Emma was unable to finish her sentence with her right hand pointed at Ruby's face.

"A werewolf," Ruby said proudly.

"Damn it Rubes! You could have told me or..."

"Well, I thought that telling the city's newly appointed police commissioner that I am actually a shapeshifter was never a good idea. And I thought that you, the city's knight, was telepathic or psychic, or whichever convenient to you, could read minds." the dark brown eyes stared deeply into the green ones as if tried to challenge them.

Emma startled at that connotation. Ruby was right. Emma had these telepathic and telekinetic abilities for as long as she could remember as if they were magic. Emma could get into people minds if she chose to. But there were some exceptional people such as Ruby who she was unable to get into their minds no matter how hard she tried.

"Then what about her, Regina..." Emma said as she sat limply on another couch that was opposing the injured woman.

"You could have told her or... something..." she continued.

Ruby raised her head to look at the woman before her as the smile on her face faltered away. She closed her eyes and sighed deeply. Again the terrified face of the Mayor's daughter came into her mind.

"How..." she swallowed her saliva that tasted much like blood."How is she?"

"Who?"

"Your mother of course! Who else are we talking about? Damn it! Regina damn it! How is Regina?" she snapped loudly and exhaled in pain.

The woman before her just sat there quietly as the knight was already expecting a rage from the injured huntress at any time.

"Fuck. This is so painful. Damn it" the wolf held her chest and groaned painfully. Every time she closed her eyes, Regina's face invaded her mind. Ruby was sure that the horrified incident would always taunt and haunt her for the rest of her life. And it caused more pain than any of her wounds.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to snap at you. It just... I just... I just want to know... how she is... is Regina... is it..." she stuttered for the first time in her life.

"Regina is doing fine" Emma interrupted as Ruby looked up at the blonde.

"Well, she is traumatized..." she stole a glance over the injured brunette who had been listening attentively upon hearing the Mayor's daughter's name. Emma was also aware about the feeling that the wolf had towards Regina.

"Traumatized but she is fine. She is in the hospital with her father. She is gonna be okay. I promise you that."

Ruby closed her eyes and leaned back on the couch. She took a deep breath in relieve. She was pretty much at ease knowing that Regina was somehow safe and alive.

"I can tell that you seem to know the whole story already," Ruby said in disgust. "Is that why you are here, Miss Savior?"

"Yeah, I have great resources," Ruby scoffed at Emma's nonchalant statement. "And Regina told me everything as well"

"Oh? I thought that you read her mind" Emma could tell whether Regina was telling the truth or being untruthful. However, Regina was one of those people with the indecipherable mind. Emma somehow suspected that Regina had a protective charm or something.

As for now, Emma was uninterested to share the remarkable details of the heiress with the upset wolf.

"She told me when the thing... the creature, I mean the werewolf appeared..."

"Me."

"What?"

"The werewolf was me. You don't have to be afraid to say it. I won't be offended." she sighed and then she looked into Emma's eyes deeply as if challenging her into a duel. "That awful creature was me indeed"

Emma could feel the uneasiness. Sure with her warrior-like ability and her extrasensory ability, the knight would be able to take down the injured huntress within minutes. However, the last thing she ever wanted to do is to make another unreadable enemy out her friend.

"Fine. Listen, she told me that when you got into the city hall, you were like a crazy savage animal that had been attacking everyone in its sight including my men,"

"Your men were total idiots. They made shit worse," The wolf tried to suppress the heartache that she had immediately upon hearing that her other self was being grotesquely described by Regina.

"No, we got Pan in sight until a certain werewolf decided to barge in attacking everyone," Ruby scoffed at that statement.

"Pan was in your sight? Tell me, how the hell the Mayor as well as his daughter ended up being held up by those arseholes?" she asked with an obvious mocking tone.

"Ruby, you know that Pan is just... not so human. His capability of causing damage is infinite,"

"Yes, I could sense that. Why the hell do you think that I was there for?"

"Rubes, I was there! David, Robin and even Tink were there as well. I could fight Pan with the others,"

"I don't care about others. I only care about Regina and I could fight Pan easily by myself." Emma could sense the smugness in the wolf's sentences.

"You, in the other hand, the city's white knight, had the whole city and a bunch of old councilmen to be concerned about," Emma sighed heavily and tried to avoid anymore argument with the injured brunette and decided to keep on telling the anecdote instead.

"Well, she saw you were attacking Pan and the other creeps before they vanished into the aftermath of the explosion."

"Yeah, that damn explosion caused by your men. The Mayor and Regina got hurt because of that fucking explosion!"

"I know," Emma sighed again, "That was the mistake,"

"A fucking stupid mistake,"

"And the next thing she remembered was seeing that creature dragged her unconscious father with its mouth, covered with blood, out of the Mayor's room. So, when you came back to get her, she just had to shoot you twice with a gun that she found there,"

Ruby started to feel the anguish and looked at her right shoulder where a bullet used to be embedded. The wound was healing but the gaping was still fairly clear to be seen.

"Yeah, the first shot gave me a scratch and it startled me. The second one was the bull's eye." The huntress said proudly. "She is getting better with that gun shit, isn't she? I think that Robin guy is a great teacher. I bet that he just wants to get into her pants. He is a good friend of yours, am I right?"

Emma glared at the woman in front of her.

"And so you decided to jump on her..."

"Jump her..." Ruby interrupted with a knowing smirk. She knew the story well and the heartache was getting intense. She could feel that both of her hands were shivering.

"Yeah, you jumped on her and trapped her beneath those filthy claws. You looked down on her, glared at her with those sharp ruthless eyes and you growled at her. She said the passed minutes being entrapped by you felt like forever. She was begging for you not to hurt her. She was crying and begging for her life," Emma kept her eyes on the wolf. "That creature above her was covered in blood, extensively," she exhaled. "She was so convinced that you were going to end her life. She was sure that you were a savage creature that would snap her..."

"Enough!" Ruby screamed out of sudden interrupting the horrific details that she was expecting. Her eyes were bright red and there were tears in them. That was the obscure memory that she tried best to forget but the blonde managed to describe them clearly. Now, she clearly remembered Regina's terrified face. The usually regally confident Regina was just a hopeless petrified girl at that time. It worsened the stinking pain inside of the wolf's chest.

"What the hell are you saying? I wouldn't... I will never..." she looked down on both of her filthy hands and breathing hard. She was trembling while recalling the incident.

"Yeah, sure you will never hurt her because she said that you release her after a while,"

"Yeah, I did..." the huntress mumbled.

"And she pushed herself to sit up but she couldn't stand. But she pushed herself and backed herself away from you. That was when…"

"I saw the big wound over her leg…"

"Over her thigh!"

"What?"

"The wound was over her left thigh!"

"Right, so your point is…?"

"She told me that the creature, which was you, licked her thigh! You don't simply go jump on a woman and lick her thigh, wolf!" Emma suddenly snapped and stood up while giving a dangerous glare at the shapeshifter.

"Lord, what the hell is wrong with you? It wasn't pleasant at all!" The wolf scowled at the other woman knowing what she meant. "I was licking a goddamn bleeding wound and she was bleeding a lot! Thanks to that damn explosion I suppose, thanks to your men! When I looked at the wound, I was sure there was no broken bone. Then, all I did then was trying to stop the bleeding!"

"Fine, you're right. I was being ridiculous. I got to her right after you got away and I saw the healing wound. By the time we got to the hospital, it was pretty much healed already,"

"Good,"

"Yeah, she'll be fine and so is Mr Mills," Emma walked towards a window in the room and took a gaze through it. There was a full view of the city since Ruby was literally staying on the rooftop. The wolf basically inherited the luxurious apartment from her family. Although Emma was sure that the wolf inherited something more important in her bloodline besides the real estates. As she gazed through the window, Emma realized that the enchanting city lights were camouflaging the authenticity of the dark secrets contained by the city.

"Thank you," the blonde said although her eyes were still fixed to the window. The wolf raised her head to look at the other woman.

"She was terrified at first until we saw the healed wound. She realized that you were trying to help her and you were trying to get the Mayor to a safer spot. Your instinct was right about Pan and his men as well, although they got away, I think they won't show up again, at least for the time being,"

"Pfft," the wolf scoffed. "Whatever, I don't care. I wasn't doing it for the city, all I did was for…,"

"I know," Emma gave the wolf a knowing smile before turned her face towards the window again.

"Thank you. She definitely would say thank you if she were here,"

There was a moment of a comfortable silence as both the knight and the hunter were being grateful as someone dear to them is somehow unharmed.

Emma's pager suddenly beeped interrupting the contented stillness. "Damn, I gotta go now. Are you gonna be okay?"

"Ems, get out. I'll live,"

The blonde sneered at the other woman while hurriedly walked towards the door. "Hey I may be able to help you to wipe out the obvious blood stain outside of your apartment but you gotta clean up most of the mess. Ya know, granny won't like the wreck," she grinned as she reached for the door knob.

"Yeah, she won't…" the wolf continued as she took a deep breath. "And both of us won't like it either,"

"What?," the blonde wrinkled her forehead. The hesitancy in the wolf's tone stopped the knight from walking out of the room.

"You were right all along. You were right about this city. When you first came to this city, she always knew that you're the one. The savior of this corrupted city. I hate you for that,"

"What are you implying?"

"You got here because you wanted answers, right?"

Emma could feel the sudden chills in the room. She could tell that despite the pain, physically, the wolf was mostly healed.

"She was right when she thought that I was going to harm her just now,"

"What the hell are you saying, dude?" the white knight could feel that her heart was pounding rapidly and her hands balled into fist.

"Yeah, I was trying to protect the unconscious Mayor from all the wreckages. I brought him to safety. Then, I was trying to help her but all I got from her was a bullet. I was so frustrated that my wrath made me overlook everything, including her. I was a wolf and there was no humanly instinct anymore at that time,"

The knight could feel that both of her hands were trembling.

"So, when I… the werewolf rushed at her and got shot for the second time. I think I had loss it. I… the beast, that was me, it was so mad, that I am sure that… that thing would kill her in split seconds," the wolf covered his face with both of her hands, unable to look at the shocked woman in front of her. Ruby was mortified that her fury got the best of her and that was the real thing that she was trying to oppress from her memory.

Emma was so stunned by the wolf's revelation although she knew that it was not impossible.

"But you didn't harm her," the blonde walked towards the repented woman. "And you saved her life instead," there was a hissing sound at the end of the knight's word. The wolf realized that the other woman was holding back her anger.

The wolf raised her head just to have a white knight stood valiantly in front of her and those green bluish eyes were staring eerily into the wolf's eyes.

"She was fine and she was thankful," the blonde raised her voice. "So, I am just gonna ignore those bloody shit you said just now,"

"But I swear, Ruby, if you ever hurt Regina again, even just a strand of hairs, I swear I will end your life miserably, if it's the last thing I do!" The wolf noticed that none of the knight's words was dithered at all. The white knight signified each of her words.

Like a real noble warrior, the blonde walked away from the injured wolf without causing anymore injury.

"Hey, so you came here looking for me was because of her?" Ruby stood up and called upon the blonde.

The knight glanced over her shoulder to look at Ruby. "Wolf, just stay away from Regina!" And she walked out the apartment silently while holding back the repulsion inside of her.

"Bullshit," the wolf muttered to herself as she fell on the couch floppily. She smiled devilishly upon recalling the threat by the white knight.

Her humanly conscience kept telling her to respect Emma, the knight, a good friend and to stay away from Regina but her canine sense was telling her to confront the knight and to stand by Regina.

The wolf realized that all of sudden her life was getting more interesting.


End file.
